Fadeout

Chapter 5: Silas

A week had gone by and Silas almost had the guards’ schedule memorized. It was amazing how much he noticed when he was actually paying attention. He discovered that Westminster’s first name was Alfonzo and that he had stolen money from a prince, which must have been why he was disgraced. Silas found out that the other Ajak guard’s name was Hugle, like bugle but with an ‘H,’ and Hugle hated working with Rickman. Every time they patrolled the wall together Hugle would never look in Rickman’s general direction. Lloyd, the old Faan guard, preferred to sit and he spent most of his time on break or watching monitors.

Tymas was the only guard Silas didn’t learn anything new about. He kept mostly to himself and he liked order and kept everyone in order. Everyone instinctively knew that if Tymas was having a bad day, everyone would too. He seemed to thrive on putting the rowdy boys back in their place, even if they weren’t being that rowdy. But these were all things Silas already knew.

 After spending three nights up, he felt like he had to yawn the whole time he ran. Silas finally had a rough idea of the night schedule. It was really simple. After dinner everyone returned to their cells and the doors were locked. There was one walk-through two minutes after lights out, normally by Hugle or Rickman. Neither guard checked beds though or even peeked through the glass in the doors. They just walked to the end of the hall and back. Once the walk-through was done, no one entered the ward until seven in the morning when everyone lined up for breakfast.

The good news was that if they escaped, it would be hours before anyone noticed they were missing. The bad news was that anyone walking in the halls would be unusual and probably seen on whatever cameras covered the halls. Although Silas was not certain anyone watched those cameras, or if they actually worked.

Every other day he would update Malina on what he’d seen and she would inform him of the guards in the girls ward. Slowly, a plan began to form. The night would be the best time to escape, preferably sometime after 10pm and before midnight. Most of the guards were asleep and no one would know something was happening.

The problem was how to get out of their cells. The easiest option was if someone on the outside simply opened the door. The handles were only on the outside and could be opened by hand or through a computer command. Any other idea to break through, or work around, the door’s magnetic sensors would take a lot of time to figure out.

Silas sighed. He leaned against the stone wall and looked out at the rest of the yard. Patton was tossing the ball with another boy. He hadn’t talked to Malina today, but she was busy smiling at Marcus, one of the older guys. Marcus seemed just as interested and was in the midst of telling a subtly animated story which made Malina’s smile grow.

A door from the wall tower slammed right above Silas. He jerked.

“Hugle, straighten your uniform.” It was Westminster. “Didn’t you hear the owner is coming? He wants everything running smoothly for the reaping.”

Silas’ ears perked up. Stephen, a guy two years older than Silas, raised his eyebrows and glanced up. Silas knew he was thinking the same thing. There was going to be a reaping?

“Which one is this, the small ones we normally do?” Hugle asked. Silas could barely make out his words, but he could hear the jingle of Hugle’s belt as he tucked his shirt in.

“Not this time. Boss has something big planned. So straighten up. I’d hate for you to be demoted.” Footsteps clomped away and the door shut.

“I’m sure you would,” Hugle said with a heavy dripping of sarcasm.

They were planning a reaping, and not just a normal reaping of one or two kids, but something big. And it would be happening soon.

“I’ve got to tell the others,” Stephen said quietly.

“Yes.” He had to warn Malina. They would need to move their plans along faster.

“Tell everyone you can to lock their emotions.”

“Lock them?”

“Yes.”

“How can we do that?”

“You create a strong emotional key and then when they take you to the Machine, they can’t get to your memories.”

“And this works?” Silas couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard of this before.

“It did for Greg, a guy four years older than me. They took him to the Machine and when they couldn’t crack him, they moved him to a farm. I’m going to tell Patrick about the reaping.” Stephen walked away and leaned calmly against the wall near a guy Silas assumed was Patrick. Stephen’s mouth moved, but they could have been talking about breakfast for all the lack of emotions Silas saw.

Malina stood up, whispered something in Marcus’ ear and then walked in Silas’ direction. Silas looked over at the doors, so that he could see where she was out of the corner of his eye, but it didn’t appear like he was watching her. She grabbed a handful of dirt, took her time picking out little pebbles and tossing them back into the dirt floor, before she leaned next to Silas on the wall.

Everything that was in Silas wanted to blurt out what he’d learned, but he took deep slow breaths and waited for his heart rate to cool.

“I’ve been thinking,” Malina said. “We need to see inside the control room.”

“What? That’s crazy.”

“How else are we going to know where the cameras are placed?”

Silas rubbed his eyes. “I can drop out of line at various points and see how quickly they respond.”

“That could take forever.”

She was probably right and they needed to speed things up.

“I heard that the owner is coming and there will be a big reaping while he’s here.” Silas scratched the back of his head, which allowed him to look right at Malina. Her face was blank, although she let out a sigh.

When she didn’t respond, Silas added, “I also heard that there is a way we can lock our memories to keep the Machine from--”

“By creating a key?”

He was surprised at her interruption. “Have you heard of it before?”

“Yes, but not everyone can do it, because it has to happen organically. You can’t force it.”

“But you could do it and then we’d have more time.”

Malina let out a soft laugh.

“What?”

“It’s not going to work for me, Silly.”

The bell rang once and all the kids began to line up. Malina pushed away from the wall.

“But why?”

Malina just smiled and shook her head before joining the other girls in the line. She moved farther up in the line than she normally was and the surrounding girls glanced cautiously around. Any deviation from the normal routine was grounds for punishment. Silas waved at her, but she would not turn around.

The second bell rang and the doors to the wards opened. In between the two ward hallways was the control room and suddenly Silas had a bad feeling about what Malina was going to do. The lines started moving and Malina kept her knees bent so she was closer to the height of the girls around her. Silas could only drag his feet, willing her to look back at him.

Silas felt his heart rate shooting for the sky with every passing second. Then Malina jumped out of line and ran into the control room screaming at the top of her lungs.